Functionality

Right-clicking on a villager will open a GUI allowing a player to trade with the villager. Villagers will make offers based on their profession and career, and will only make trades based on what offers they are making. Different offers may be viewed by pressing the left and right buttons next to the currently displayed offer. All offers involve emerald as a currency, and some item pertinent to the villager's career. Trading allows the acquisition of uncommon items. It is also the only legitimate method of acquiring bottles o' enchanting in Survival mode.

Different careers are assigned to each villager, and are viewable in the trading GUI. For example, brown-robed villagers can be fletchers or fishermen; blacksmiths can be armorers or weapon smiths; etc. Every villager spawns with tier 1 of their given career, which range from 2–4 initial unlocked trades (i.e. all shepherds will spawn with only two options, buying wool and selling shears). Each tier consists of a defined set of trade offers, and the tiers are the same for any given career (see the chart below). They can unlock new tiers when an existing offer is traded. Note that the trading GUI must be closed before a villager will unlock a new tier. When they do, they will receive Regeneration I and become surrounded with purple and green particles for a few seconds. Each career has a fixed sequence of tiers, and will only unlock a finite number of offers.

Villagers will deactivate an offer if the offer has been used some number of times. The chance of an offer's deactivation is random, but an offer must be used at least 2 times before it is eligible for deactivation. After an offer has been used 12 times, it is guaranteed to be deactivated. Trading a different offer may activate an offer again. When an offer is disabled, a red X will appear in the trading interface, and it has the same particle effect as an offer being created.

An offer is guaranteed to reactivate available options (and unlock a tier, if some have not yet been unlocked) the first time it is traded. On subsequent trades, it will only have a 20% chance of doing so, per trade. For example, if a farmer villager has a trade which is 8 pumpkins for 1 emerald, and a stack of 64 pumpkins is traded, this will count as 8 attempts with each attempt having a 20% chance to reactivate the villager's trades.

Villagers will distinguish between damage values, so different colors of wool cannot replace white wool, charcoal cannot be traded in place of coal, and damaged tools cannot be traded in place of fully repaired tools. NBT data, however, is ignored, so the content of a written book does not matter.

In Java Edition, all trades reward the player with 3–6 experience, or 8–11 experience if the villager is in a state where it is willing to breed. This is also true in Bedrock editions, except that certain trades don't reward any experience: the first-tier trades of a Farmer, the rotten flesh trade of a Cleric, the pork chop trade of a Butcher, or the string trade of a Fletcher.

↑ abcdefghiWhen creating an enchantment offer, the game uses a random enchantment level from 5 – 19. For a listing of what enchantments will show up at these levels, see Enchantment Mechanics.

↑Each villager will charge the same number of emeralds for all colors.

↑ abcBook will only have one enchantment. The enchantment is chosen randomly, with equal chance of any enchantment type occurring and equal chance to get any level of it, so higher-leveled enchantments are as likely to get as low-leveled enchantments. The price in emeralds depends on enchantment level and "treasure" status. The possible values are 5 – 19 emeralds for Lvl I, 8 – 32 for Lvl II, 11 – 45 for Lvl III, 14 – 58 for Lvl IV, and 17 – 71 for Lvl V. For "treasure" enchantments the price is doubled. Note that the cost is capped to 64, meaning that for example Lvl V books truly range from 17 - 64 emeralds with costs at the upper end of the range being more common.

↑ abThis trade cannot be unlocked while in a Superflat world that does not include the structure as part of its preset. It cannot be unlocked if the villager is in the Nether or the End either. The trade can be unlocked, however, while in a world with 'Generate Stuctures' set to 'OFF', and also in a Customized world with the specific structure toggled to 'No'.

Video

History

Notch answered some questions about an idea he had for villagers: If you treat the villagers well (giving them items), they'll give you items back, if you treat the villagers badly (attacking/killing them), their Iron Golems will try to do the same to you, and raiding chests will anger the owners of the town/chest and they will attack.

The librarian's paper offer was adjusted to 24-35 paper per emerald, and the farmer's arrow offer was corrected to 9-12 per emerald.

The offer probability mechanic was changed: as more offers exist for a villager, the probability of all offers rise. When an offer's probability goes beyond a certain limit, its probability goes down. The net effect is that rarer offers become more common when a villager has many offers, and common offers become rarer.

The offer removal mechanic has been replaced with an offer disabling mechanic.

All offers begin with 7 uses, allowing the offer to be traded up to seven times.

After this, even if the player has not left the trading GUI, the offer is disabled.

If a player trades the last offer on the list and closes the GUI, waiting for particles to appear around the villager, all disabled offers are renewed with 2-12 additional uses added to them.

It is possible for the final offer slot to be disabled, at which point no new offers can be generated and no existing offers can be renewed.

Trading with the last offer slot available will increase your popularity with the village by one point. Note that your popularity applies to the village as a whole, and other players' popularity is not affected.

In other languages

Content is available under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 unless otherwise noted.Minecraft content and materials are trademarks and copyrights of Mojang and its licensors. All rights reserved.
This site is a part of Curse, Inc. and is not affiliated with Mojang.